(People of a certain age who have- or had- internet accounts at AOL.)

If you have even a passing interest in the ongoing circus that is America these days, you probably have heard of the massive cyber assault by the Chinese on just about every aspect of our pubic life.

It is much cheaper to steal someone else’s intellectual property than either purchase it or develop your own. Purely a business case, right? There is a definite issue with the moral high-ground of the US Government, though, thanks to that self-righteous weasel Eddie Snowden; he not only violated an oath, but stole the intellectual property of our nation.

Not to say that there are no problems with what technology can do- and is being done to all of us. I am prepared to say that what the boys and girls at Fort Meade were doing was legal. I am also prepared to stipulate that the implications of what could be done with the fruits of their labor scares the crap out of me.

We are pretty much into the “star chamber” realm of justice now, and I think a wise person would opt to keep their head down.

I’m not, and here is why I am going to introduce you to a person- I am going to assume it is a male geek in his thirties – who is not dissimilar to Eddie Snowden.

Some even claim that the hacker who uses the handle “Guccifer” actually is Snowden, though I think he is on a lesser level of hell than the transit-zone Moscow fugitive.

I have decided that simmering outrage is not the way to look at Life in These United States. I am going to view life through the lens of the Latin American literary genre of of Magical Realism, since that is is how I am going to cope. Perhaps the mid-term elections will help me to decide how serious I need to be. Seriously, we need to confront the notion that our privacy is gone. I mean really gone.

I was sitting in the “secure” proposal room down in Charlottesville with a former Intelligence Community senior I like a lot. In a break between reviewing a proposal for a 32 Full Time Equivalent contract supporting a classified analytic contract, he mentioned something that had just happened to a former colleague and reserve Naval Officer.

This was something of which I was vaguely aware several months ago, when a reviled former President was outted as an aspiring watercolor artist. But I did not know who leaked the pictures- not until Monday.

An asshole with an apparent long track record of malicious hacking has been opening up the email accounts of some USG seniors, former and current. The list of notables is relatively bi-partisan, with the AOL accounts of Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell (and many more) being compromised along with George W’s.

If you sense that he is targeting a known vulnerability in the AOL program, you would be right. The accounts targeted are those of early internet adopters who now (like me) are of a certain age.

As is AOL. Cripes, I make a joke out of it when I have to give out my e-mail address. “Yes,” I say. “I am that old.” I think I picked that internet provider because it once was considered a little daring, like almost twenty years ago.

I think I even pay them monthly for the privilege of being vulnerable.

Anyway, “Guccifer,” as he calls himself at the moment, takes delight in trolling through personal email and photos in the incoming and outgoing folder in AOL accounts. Apparently his modus operandi is to gain access through phishing, spook emails that can collect personal information. I get them, periodically, the ones labeled “From the AOL Team: we are going to shut down access unless you validate your personal information.”

With enough to crack into the account with the donated information, the asshole has access to the full address list and contents of the whole account, which can be used to target the next AOL chump on the list. Just because you are an Important Person doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.

It is all bogus, but it sends a chill down my spine that I may have already have had contact with this creep, even if I did not open one of his communications.

Anyway, my pal told me to Google the name in question, and the , and and then rolling up other accounts in the target’s contacts list. Creepy- since it does not appear to be financially motivated, but guerrilla attacks to defame character and destroy reputations.

Here is what happened to our mutual pal:

“Hacker Guccifer recently breached the personal e-mail of Mr. X, who recently retired as Vice Director for Information Management and Deputy CIO at one of the three-letter agencies.

Guccifer provided a wide range of documents including an appraisal of Mr. X’s house, a photo of X with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and e-mails dating back to at least 2011.

Topics of the e-mails include the political (“it’s not Obamas fault at all. I’d say its at least 80 percent the fault of the Republicans, perhaps even 90 percent. But if Obama weren’t so weak he could blunt their stupidity”) and the personal (“I’m still hitting the gym hard — always will. I’m also hitting the girlfriend hard and often”).

Mr. X also wrote, “We are very involved in the Wikileaks stuff and have a lot of things on our network to prevent something like that from happening to us. Do we have enough — no, not by a long shot. We need a lot of money in order to be fully protected. We are in the process of building our case for a huge budget add to protect the network.”

I won’t add to Mr. X’s embarrassment, since the description of cyber intimacy with his fiancé was also reported in painfully graphic terms on several lascivious sites that have something less than the morals of TMZ, which is to say that there are still things you cannot say on television but you can say in graphic detail on the internet.

I write polemics all the time, and curse and all sorts of stuff, depending on who I am writing to. There even was a time when I considered the AOL stream to be semi-private, though with the risk that inadvertently offensive opinion (depends on who is determined to be offended, of course) will be forwarded to the entire cyber-universe.

Maybe it is time to scrap the AOL account and delete from this end, though of course the 3,470 outgoing emails on this account (soon to be 3,471 with this missive) will live forever on the AOL server, and in Salt Lake City with our friends at Fort Meade, should I ever be considered a target worthy of additional scrutiny, of course with FISA approval.

Poor Mr. X. He came to someone’s notice.

Just wait until all the new cars are all wirelessly linked into the grid, and our health records are centralized under the tender care of HHS and the IRS.

I don’t know anymore. I am not even sure that enough Magical Reality can account for what the technology is going to make horrifyingly possible.

Crap.

(Defaced page from the AOL account of a former President).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com